For those of you who haven’t yet heard of it, NaNoWriMo ( Nah-No-Re-Mo shortened to Nano) is a month-long writing challenge, where you write 1667 words every day.

Why does that sound so very simple and yet weirdly specific?

Because the actual goal is to reach 50,000 words by the end of the month, and to do that your goal is to write at least 1667 words every day during the month of November.

That’s right, from the bum-end of Halloween to the beginning of socially-acceptable Christmas Music, the challenge is to write a novel. You’ve been planning, in general, to write a novel for some time, and this is a chance to kick into gear, with events in your area with fellow writers if you’re interested, and it’s entirely free. People who reach the 50k goal even get a free printed copy of their very own novel, and discounts for otherwise pricey writing software.

It’s neat.

My sister Lexy (link to her blog) has participated with me, and this year we’ve convinced our dear Mother to join the fun.

I’ve participated for roughly 5 years now, and recently succeeded in reaching 50k this summer, in Camp Nano, and have succeeded in 3 of those 5 years… but it’s always a question of what I want to work on.

Sometimes I’ll work on fanfiction, because I like writing fanfiction, and it’s good to stay in practice. Because fanfiction is writing practice, pretty much. What I post is pretty darn popular, too, so as I post I get a lot of feedback. And that’s nice. Link to my stuff.

But I also do work on my own original stuff… I’ve got a couple of stories ongoing, but I work on them pretty consistently during the year, so when I decide not to write fanfiction in November, I like to start on a whole new story.

I’m going to write a blog-story, from the pov of my main character Sunny. He can control clouds–well, only the one, and it only sort of does what he wants, but it’s not like he can tell anyone about it, so… blogging. Nice and anonymous.

Today I’m in Ottawa, having taken a 6pm flight from Halifax, and I’ll be here for a few days before taking a train to Toronto.

Before my flight, though, I had to finish up packing, shower (By the way, if you’re going to be travelling, SHOWER BEFORE HAND. Sincerely, Someone Who May End Up Sitting Next To You In The Future), and I managed to finish that a little after 3.

I did Siobhan’s dishes since I had the time, and then looked up the best route to take to get to the Halifax Airport.

I put Siobhan’s street as the ‘from’ and got the address of Halifax’s Airport, clicked for the best route via busses since it would be cheaper, and…

Sorry, we don’t have transit schedule data for a trip from Siobhan’s Address, Halifax, NS to Bell Blvd, Enfield, NS B2T 1K2 at the time and date you specified.

I’ve been trying to find the time to visit my friend Siobhan in Halifax for a while now, and now there’s reading week!

And them I’m visiting my friends in Ottawa!

So much travelling!

And it didn’t start out well…

Yesterday (16th) I had everything packed (except my camera charger, dammit!), and was out of the door at 4:30 to get to the airport for my 6pm flight.

Then there was a blizzard.

So we lost some time.

THEN I hear that my flight is boarding about the time that I’m heading off to go to the closest Timmy’s to get some food to bring on the flight, since I hadn’t had time to eat much earlier.

So I’m hungry, and warm, and in the plane, and decide “why not a nap?”

An hour later I wake up, and we’re on the ground, and I think “Oh, that’s weird they didn’t wake me up for takeoff…. wait…” I check my watch. It’s 7.

Plane leaves at 6… 2ish hour long flight… wait…

“Have we taken off?”

“No.”

(The guy sitting next to me wasn’t much of a talker…)

Three hours later, talk of bits and pieces of the plane having broken (WHAT???), refueling AGAIN (WHYYY????), and a de-icing that make me think of a car-wash without the multi-coloured soap trails (strangely mesmerizing… like whoa), and we were off.

By this time I was starving.

Off the plane and after the long walk to the baggage claim, and I was just waiting for the luggage to start rolling by when I hear:

“Sorry, are you Darcy?”

This is startling when the person saying this os someone you

a) don’t know

b) is saying it when you’ve just gotten to an area you’ve NEVER been before

and

c) are unprepared for.

Apparently Siobhan (her tumblr link above) had asked a friend to meet me, since she was meeting another friend who also happened to be on the same plane, and we shared cab fare, so that was convenient 🙂

I got to Siobhan’s at about 12:40 Toronto Time (1:40am Halifax), and met a couple of her friends, and generally lots of fun stuff happening, so I’m enjoying seeing her and hanging out!

This was mostly an update of what’s happening, and I may have a couple of more posts to put up to talk about my time here, but for now I’m still tired, full of chicken (Huzzah for already-cooked whole chickens at the Superstore!), and having fun 🙂

So I talk about my stories a bit more than would probably be considered ‘cool’, but it’s interesting, and I have a good number of people who are pretty much my ‘following’ on the internet, who I recognize their pennames and message back and forth with them.

It’s just a thing, that’s all.

So I have internet friends who talk to me most when I post new chapters (conditional friendship? Yes, but I don’t exactly read their stories if they have them up…), but regularly get reviews and comments from other people.

(Shocker)

And most times it’s pretty positive things, and that’s fantastic, and sometimes it’s just a “Good job! Update soon!” bit of almost-whatever that doesn’t tell me much, and sometimes I get these amazing paragraphs of insight.

Sometimes paragraphs of ‘Okay, this was good, here’s my thoughts on it, some good some bad’ and sometimes that’s even better than the reviews full of nothing more than amazement at my godly ability to write and sometimes make people cry and laugh.

But fairly recently I got a review that I had mixd feelings on.

Less so now, but it gave me a variety of feels, so Imma talk about it.

In my story “And I Wake Up” (A Torchwood Season 3 fix-it, because if you’re into Torchwood and have seen the end of Season 3, you know it needs fixin’) (Summary in link, check it out) my most recent chapter (4) has a part where my mc (Main Character) goes a bit insane.

This is understandable due to the fact that he keeps getting shot.

The reviewer said that perhaps I should have a warning for torture, or graphic violence since (s)he had to skim through it, and it was more disturbing due to the somewhat temporary body issues my mc has, and this is what has me conflicted:

It’s not graphic.

The ‘graphic’ part is “He raised his arm and pulled the trigger” with mad ravings in between.

Okay, there is some finger biting, and that could be graphic, so I understand that, but without copying the review here it was the shooting that was the reviewer’s problem.

I included a trigger-warning (haha, puns) in both my archive of our own (or Ao3) post and my fanfiction.net post, because you know what? Far enough. I don’t agree at all wit the graphicness thing, or at least not with what the reviewer was categorizing as ‘graphic violence’ but it could be that I have a different outlook on what consists of ‘graphic violence’

You may ask at this point, where be the mixed feelings matey? (if you’re a pirate)

Well…

Part of me is delighted that my writing impacted this person so much that they had to skim.

And then I get a bit angry that they’re missing on so much insight in the skimming part, but then I kind of swing back into delight because HELLO! I wrote something intending for it to be maybe a bit disturbing and worrying and someone read it and found it VERY disturbing! That’s a writing VICTORY!

So much success!

I get super excited when people get extreme feelings from my writing, you have no idea.

I’m practically giggly when someone admits through a comment or review that some part of my writing made them cry, and part of me is happy because it means my own getting emotional (and crying myself) over the scene was super effective, and the rest of me is ecstatic because I MADE YOU FEEL SOMETHING WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION!

Especially since I’m pretty sure most of my stories are feel-good kind of stories. So hearing that my stories upset some part of you is amazing in a way that is so, SO conflicting!

It’s like you’re telling me that your dog or cat of gerbil died… and then you won the lottery.

I just don’t know what to focus on.

So this review saying that they enjoy my story, “oh and here’s a suggestion because you gave me unexpected feelings” is just..

GAH!

It’s ridiculous how much I enjoy feedback, positive or negative (edit: yes I do like negative feedback, but only if you’re constructive. I don’t appreciate “YOU SUCK JUST BECAUSE! BLAGH!” feedback, because then you’re an ass and I just can’t appreciate farts).

But then, it’s a bit like dog owners who say ‘thanks’ when someone says how pretty their dog is (Lexy.)

(That thanks is ridiculous no matter how you try to rationalize it.)

But I made the story, I had it’s plot-lines percolating in my mind for months before I got down to writing it, and it’s fantastic having people say “Hey, you did good, I look forward to more! Cheers!”

I’m at 17000-something right now, and that means that I have to write about 7000 words today to get caught up, and wow is that not happening.

I’m not working on only one story this time, and my original plan was to do a Sherlock (BBC) story, but the story that I had in mind is coming out as slow as molasses, and I’m currently hating it despite how amazing I know it would be (it’s been knocking about my head for a while now), so I’m working on something else right now.

I’ve moved on to Torchwood fanfiction. If you’re interested in the show, you’ll know that the end of season three is wrong in so many ways, and if you haven’t gotten there, then you’ll know that the end of season 2 is also horrible (and awesome, don’t forget awesome), and if you aren’t there yet, then you’ll know that the end of season 1 is horrible, but, like the end of season 2, awesome, especially if you watch Dr. Who, because then you’re also saying “OH MY GOD I SAW THAT EPISODE!”

Fun fact for you: When moving the copies of Doctor Who, to keep them from being stolen, they labeled them “Torchwood”, an anagram of Doctor Who.

Now I wait a moment as you spell out Torchwood out of Doctor Who, and Doctor Who out of Torchwood.

Go ahead, I did the same.

But, anyway, I’m doing a ‘Fix-It’ starting after season 3, and I have nearly 10,000 words of it written. When I post it, feel free to check it out (I’ll add two links at the end of this post)

How have I got 17-something k words if I only have about 10k of this story written. That’s me working on my HP fanfic, and my two other Sherlock stories, and adding in the 500-something words of my planned BBC Sherlock story, the one that’s hating on my brain.

Good Luck Fellow NaNo-ers, and for those following Lexy’s blog, know she’s working on extensions of the stories she’s posted on things like Red Writing Hood and Trifecta. HERE for a link to her story archives, maybe she’ll post her story somewhere (maybe on her blog?), I’ll bug her about it if you do 🙂

My Torchwood Fix-It story: And I Wake Up (Lexy, don’t read it before you see season 3.)

Today’s video I found on DeviantArt. The person who made this used paper cut outs and shadows, and I thought this was pretty darn cool 🙂

It’s a play on all those stories about wolves stealing babies… Werewolf or otherwise. I always thought those myths seemed pretty silly. A wolf (or werewolf, whatever) managing to get into your house, steal your baby (rather than eat it right there), keep it alive while carrying it off (A wild animal carrying it by it’s swaddling maybe? And why would they want to keep it alive anyway?) until you have the chance to find the baby missing and hunt the wolf down. You may not find it, and all will be sad. You may find a lone wolf instead, and kill it as it was possibly obviously the one to kill the baby.

Silly.

Real life? A wolf comes in, pisses on your floor, kills your baby, eats a great deal of it, and either you come home and freak out, or wolf goes away and you come home to freak out.

OR: You lost/sold your child, and go out in search (or in ‘search’) of it. Find a wolf and kill it if you can’t find (or ‘find’) the baby that you lost/sold.

Cheerful.

But this short video is cool, with flute music that was used amazingly with shadow birds, the wolf, and other animals.

Hope you all enjoy! Have a happy Friday!

Also, it’s Friday the 13th? For all those superstitious, the reason why this day is supposedly ‘unlucky’ is because it was believed that there used to be 13 months, and witches would do some sort of horrific magic every week of this month. So, the calendar was shortened to only 12 months (solves the problem, doesn’t it? They HAVE to follow this new calendar), but since Friday the 13th came so rarely, it was possible that the witches could do this horrible magic on this day.